Over the past 24 hours, the firings of various NFL coaches was the most popular topic among the top sports blogs, in particular the firing of NY Jets coach Eric Mangini. The woes of the Dallas Cowboys continued to be a popular topic, especially from bloggers alarmed by comments from ESPN’s Cris Carter on WR Terrell Owens that if Carter ran the Cowboys he would get rid of T.O. immediately and ‘put a bullet in him’. Various college football bowl games were highly discussed, the Alamo Bowl between Missouri and Northwestern in particular. No. 11 Georgetown’s win over No. 2 Connecticut in men’s college basketball was also a hot topic. Rounding out the top five was bloggers denouncing N.Y. Post columnist Phil Mushnick’s opinion that Fox’s Howie Long jokingly calling fellow analyst Terry Bradshaw a “scumbag” on the air was inappropriate.

Every Monday through Thursday, Buzz Manager Blog reports the Top 5 Topics discussed by the most influential sports blogs, as rated by Sports Media Challenge’s Sports Blog Index.

Over the weekend, the NFL was the most popular topic among the top sports blogs, in particular the Giants’ overtime win over the Panthers to secure home-field advantage in the playoffs, losses by the Jets, Cardinals, and Lions, and the Chargers still having a chance at the playoffs. Also highly discussed was Detroit News columnist Rob Parker asking Lions head coach Rod Marinelli what many perceived to be an inappropriate question during a postgame news conference. Pictures and video from the demolition of the RCA Dome in Indianapolis were also popular. A Vancouver Courier column written by Mark Hasiuk raised eyebrows in the blog world due to some of its criticism towards the NBA. Rounding out the Top 5 was speculation surrounding a Chinese government document that allegedly shows Nets F Yi Jianlian as being 24 years old, not 21 as he supposedly led the NBA to believe.

Every Monday through Thursday, Buzz Manager Blog reports the Top 5 Topics discussed by the most influential sports blogs, as rated by Sports Media Challenge’s Sports Blog Index.

Over the past 24 hours, Penn State head coach Joe Paterno signing a three year contract extension was the most popular topic among the top sports blogs. Debate about the 2009 NFL Pro Bowl selections also fueled blog conversation. Controversy surround Auburn University’s hiring of Gene Chizik as the next football coach continued to be highly discussed. Rounding out the top five was gossip about Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo and TE Jason Witten not attending WR Terrell Owens’ birthday party on Monday, increasing speculation that the trio do not get along. Rounding out the top five was the Knicks’ highly-paid point guard that is now banned from participating with the team, Stephon Marbury, purchasing a courtside ticket and attending the Knicks-Lakers game in Los Angeles as a spectator.

So I’m a diehard fan of college football and of social media. The convergence is very cool and in my opinion extremely appropriate considering the masses of displaced fans. In that vein, we at Sports Media Challenge came up with a test of whether or not we were in a different orbit than the rest of the sports world.

Shaq’s emergence on twitter has been a monumental success which just set our imaginations loose here in Charlotte, NC. Twitter seems to shine around events. I actually tracked twitter conversations prior to, during and after the Longhorns Thanksgiving day game to determine if the conversation escalated during the live game or not. It clearly did.

So we thought we would combine the mass power of twitter and other social media platforms to reach out to Penn State and college football fans to create a surprise virtual birthday party for the legendary Coach Joe Paterno as he turns 82 on Sunday. It’s not in Joe Pa’s nature to intentionally draw attention to himself especially as he’s readying his team to play in the Rose Bowl on Jan.1st. But we can do it for him and show the sports world and frankly world in general, the power of what we call fan-generated media.

An aside here. My new found twitter friends have been invaluable @meglyn, @publiside, @lisahoffmann in this effort as have the SMC staff Brittany, Hannah, Ryan and Jackie-a hardworking intern. They’ve generated ideas and implemented them at all hours of the day and night. This social media stuff may be “free” or low cost, but certainly not low maintenance.

So for the sake of those trying to figure this social media thing out like we are, here are a few points to keep in mind – challenges and fun involved in this worthwhile project of creating the sports world’s first ever virtual birthday party.

Short lead time. Through social media & with twitter you can launch a major project like this in a week’s time but if you can get more time ,do.

Hash tags for critical tracking. It took us a couple of days to remember to put #JoePa82 at the end of our tweets to make it easier for us to see what kind of traction we are getting and make necessary adjustments. Buzz Manager will track and analyze conversations across all social media.

Priorities. It’s definitely a bad time to try to enlist any help for a project like this outside of bowl preparations.

Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants. Inviting people to a virtual birthday party is one thing, making it easy for them to understand what that means and how to participate is something different , especially if they don’t spend much if any time in the social media space.

Community Relevance. The larger a twitter community “followers” the better, however, all the followers in the world won’t help you if your interests in the project don’t intersect. You can’t rally the fans around football if they’re more interested in baking cookies.

There are obviously many more lessons learned which we can talk about later but hopefully this will start you thinking about the possibilities of word of mouth marketing and the many routes to get you there. So if you’re inclined to celebrate Coach Paterno’s 82nd birthday “virtually” or are simply willing to be a part of this social media experiment, check out the birthday blog http://JoePaBirthday.blogspot.com and…

1.Spread the word to those who might be interested

2.Post links to videos, audios, or add your text best wishes to Joe Pa in comments

3.Check back to see the lead up to the big day on Sunday (watch for other big name coaches to send their bests to Joe Pa on the blog)

We don’t expect Joe pa to be checking the internet so we’re pretty sure it’ll stay a surprise for at least a couple more days. More to come tomorrow …

Every Monday through Thursday, Buzz Manager Blog reports the Top 5 Topics discussed by the most influential sports blogs, as rated by Sports Media Challenge’s Sports Blog Index.

Over the weekend, the Dallas Cowboys took center stage on the top sports blogs due to a combination of discussion on their win over the NY Giants as well as backlash from fans and Terrell Owens against ESPN’s Ed Werder for his report about conflict within the Dallas team. Also highly discussed was the Heisman Trophy, awarded over the weekend to Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford, with many bloggers also amused that FoxSports.com initially mistakenly published a story stating that Florida QB Tim Tebow had won the award. Bloggers were perplexed by Auburn’s hire of former Iowa State head coach Gene Chizik as the Tigers’ new head football coach and entertained by Auburn fans’ negative reactions to the hiring. The N.Y. Yankees signing pitcher A.J. Burnett was also popular, with discussion about the amount of money the Yankees are spending on free agent signings continuing following last week’s signing of pitcher CC Sabathia to a record contract. Rounding out the top five was the Philadelphia 76ers firing head coach Maurice Cheeks.

There are clearly a plethora of ways to acquire photos, video and audio items on the web. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any real research done about best or most common practices within the blogosphere.

When getting photos/video/audio online what source do you go to first? Do you search Google Images for pictures, YouTube for videos and so on? Do you go for higher resolution images from Getty Images or Corbis’ websites? Do you search for media in a search engine or do you go directly to the original source of that media?

If you were forced to rank the following characteristics what would be most important to you? Would you rather the media be free, easily accessible, or high resolution?